The present invention relates generally to mobile device power systems, and more specifically, to a system that manages battery energy in a mobile device.
As mobile devices continue to become a part of everyday life, an aspect of mobile devices is energy management. The performance of mobile devices has greatly improved over the years. Mobile devices are now capable of storing applications that perform complex computational tasks such as, for example, three-dimensional (3D) map generation, image recognition, and image/sound processing. However, as the complexity of the computations and tasks increase, the amount of energy required to carry out the computations and tasks also increases. For example, a geographical mapping application may include a feature of rendering a 3D map of a two-dimensional geographic location. The task of rendering the 3D map can require a large number of computations and the duration of the computations may be extensive. Consequently, many common tasks desired by users of today's mobile devices can rapidly consume the mobile device's available energy, i.e., drain the battery energy, in order to perform the necessary computations.
While there have been gradual improvements in battery technology, advancements to this date have not kept up with energy requirements of modern computational tasks. Further, the trend toward smaller, slimmer devices leads to little increase in capacity despite improvements in energy density.